Google-appointed panel to recommend right to be forgotten for EU only

Google on 2 February 2015 appointed a panel of experts to advise it on a European court ruling ordering it to remove some personal information from search results is leaning toward limiting the application to European websites only.

Google appointed the panel to advise it on how to implement the ruling from the EU's Supreme Court (SC) ordering it to remove links to information that is inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant from search results for a person's name.

The panel will held public hearings across Europe. The panel is expected to publish its non-binding report in a few days. The panel includes a former German justice minister and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

The territorial reach of the right to be forgotten decision from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has put the search engine giant at odds with the European Union's data protection watchdogs, who have told it to remove links across all relevant versions of its website, including Google.com.

Google has said that scrubbing links from all its European websites, such as Google.de in Germany, is in line with the ruling handed down last May.

The territorial scope of the ruling, as well as whether Google should inform publishers that links to their content have been scrubbed, have emerged as major impasse.